


when i close my eyes, it's you i see

by atlantisairlock



Category: Charlie's Angels (2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Canon Universe, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Falling In Love, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Sabina searches for truth in her life. She finds it, eventually, in Boz.
Relationships: Rebekah Bosley/Sabina Wilson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 101





	when i close my eyes, it's you i see

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ecchymoz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecchymoz/gifts).



> did i whip this out in like three hours because the inspo hit me + would not let go? ha ha ha! anyway... boz x sabina rights!
> 
> title from 'everywhere' by michelle branch.

Sabina's earliest memory is set in the kitchen of her childhood home, still wreathed in the scent of cinnamon walnut cookies and bathed in sunlight. 

Her parents aren't there. Out on business, as ever, something that won't change up until and even after she strikes out and leaves home to find her own way. She's seated on the kitchen island happily watching their family chef-cum-babysitter pulling a fresh batch of cookies out of the oven, giggling in delight when she laughs and hands Sabina a cookie to nibble on. "That's all until dinner, these are for your mother's fundraiser tomorrow," she warns. Her features are hazy in Sabina's memory, slipping out of reach the harder she tries to grasp them. When she closes her eyes she swears she can still feel a hand ruffling her hair and telling her she's a mischievous little scamp, but she doesn't even remember her name. 

When she's six their chef burns a single roast, a little distracted from the news that her father has died back in her native France. Sabina's parents fire her on the spot and a new chef is brought in her place the very next day. This one always makes excellent danishes but never allows Sabina on the kitchen island, and shoos her off with a stern snap when Sabina tentatively reaches for a pastry to sample.

She doesn't spend much time in the kitchen, after that.

She grows up lonely. Angry, rebellious, frustrated, combative - but mostly lonely. She runs off every private tutor her parents try to get her within three months, lashing out in increasingly violent ways until they get the hint that she doesn't want them there. Her father packs her off to boarding school without a single discussion, which isn't much better, but she quickly comes to understand that they don't really care as long as she's out of their hair nine months out of the year. She studies the material but deliberately fails every class; once she realises that the school couldn't care less about her education so long as her parents keep paying them out of the nose, she starts skipping classes and spending all her time on the field and in the stables. She falls in love with the horses - strong, brave beasts that trust her, that run on her command, that nuzzle into her shoulder when she hand-feeds them treats. Simple and innocent and never cruel, unlike her parents or teachers or any of the girls she shares the school with. 

Her focus turns to sports, physical outlets. Hitching a rifle against her shoulder and taking a shot bullseye into a paper target feels like freedom, and every smash serve she makes on the tennis courts is a surge of unadulterated joy. Nothing in the world is better than leaping on a horse's back and executing a flawless jump and for one beautiful moment, feeling like she's flying. 

She has a favourite horse in the school stables. His name is Mikkel and he's a gorgeous Friesian, and she spends more time with him than she does with any other horse in the stable - helping the stablehands with his feed, taking him out on runs, and it's on his back that she wins a dressage trophy at her first inter-school riding competition. He dies of colic when she's fifteen and for the first time in her life, Sabina feels like her whole world falls to pieces. He's the one being in the world she truly loves, who loves - loved - her back too, and just like that, he's gone.

She mopes for two weeks and cries quietly to sleep some nights until her roommate gets sick of it and offers her 'something nice'. Something she tells Sabina will take the sadness away, something that will make her feel the way she did on beautiful autumn evenings, hands gripping the reins tight and the wind rushing through her hair. 

A little later, her parents will scream and rant about her stupidity, her naivety, call the school and threaten to get it closed down if Sabina's ex-roommate isn't expelled and all her cronies with her - but Sabina's no fool and she knows what she's being offered. She looks at the proffered pills and thinks about Mikkel, about her long-gone chef, about her quiet, cold home, and says yes. 

_Far_ later, down the road, she will learn to regret that decision. She will learn to regret a lot of things. But there never comes a day when she thinks about all her rides on her beautiful boy and doesn't feel her chest ache, and there never comes a day she begrudges her younger self for chasing anything that she thought would bring her closer to having that feeling back. 

She thinks about running away, constantly, from ages seven through sixteen, especially the winter break when her parents find out she's been doing drugs and confine her to her room for a month - but it only finally happens when she's seventeen and goes home over the summer to discover that she's been summarily betrothed without her knowledge or consent, to some second son of a creepy, shady so-called businessman who has really antiquated ideas about women and inheritance and business dealings. Her parents wrestle her into an awful wedding dress and drag her to a chapel. Some weirdo from the seedier side of the business world - although Sabina later always speaks fondly of him as a godsend - barges his way in just before the vows and lets off two shots in the direction of the creepy, shady businessman. His bodyguards proceed to pull their own guns and chaos ensues. Her not-fiancé grabs her by the arm to drag her off to presumed safety. She pulls _her_ own gun, shoots him in the foot, then flees. 

By the time everything has settled down on that front, she's gone back home, ripped her dress off, changed into something practical, packed clothes, her life savings and other necessities into the sturdiest backpack she has, and she's gone into the night. 

She doesn't look back.

Street living is hard. She gets a room at a shitty run-down city motel for a while, seeks out jobs that pay her under the table, quick and easy, but the money still runs out faster than she can make it. She's deep enough into her addiction that it's hard to hold down even semi-respectable jobs at all, and at some point even a roof over her head, however leaky, becomes less important than getting the next hit. Every time she meets her dealer there's a tiny voice in her brain that screams at her to stop and turn away, but then the MDMA kicks in and it just goes quiet and she's floating, and happy, and nothing matters - not the loneliness, not the shivering in a dirty alleyway, not the hunger beginning to feel familiar in her stomach. 

She nearly gets arrested twice, but she always manages to dodge, run, hide. She'll be panting and racing down a side street with footsteps behind her, and it'll sink in, how this is going to be the rest of her life, and that's all she'll ever get to live with.

Two days after her twentieth birthday, which she spends coked out in the back of a bar, she tries to pickpocket a guy in a very expensive suit, talking irritably on the phone about stocks and all that crap. She thinks he'll be an easy mark and is very quickly proven wrong. He ends up shoving her against an alley wall and beating her near-senseless until all she can do is try to cover her head and fend off his punches. Everything hurts when he finally spits in her direction and walks away, leaving her slouched against the wall and holding a hand against her bruised, maybe broken ribs.

Right before she passes out she sees a flash of blonde hair in front of her, concerned dark eyes - an angel, maybe, decked in white with a halo above her head, and she thinks, _okay. I'm okay. It's over._

Then she wakes up, in an unbearably clean infirmary ward, bandaged up, aching, with blonde-hair-dark-eyes by her bedside, watching her all calm and patient. When Sabina blinks and makes a soft sound and tries to turn to look at her properly, she smiles. "Hello, Sabina Wilson. Welcome back to the land of the living." 

She tries to reply, ask how this woman knows her name, and realises she has a tube down her throat. Her eyes must convey the panic that suddenly sets in, because the woman slides a hand in hers and squeezes, just once, firm but gentle. "Don't talk, please. You need to rest." 

In that moment (and she would say it's the morphine talking, but no, she won't lie, because it applies for the rest of her days too), this woman, her angel, is the most beautiful thing she's seen in her life. Sabina taps out quick, stuttering Morse against her palm. _Who are you?_

It's a big question, considering the situation, _but_. "My name is Rebekah Bosley," the woman says, simply. "Welcome to the Townsend Agency." 

She spends a week or so recovering from the worst of her injuries in the Townsend HQ infirmary, although thankfully the tube is out of her throat by day two. Rebekah - Boz, she tells Sabina - comes by every day, talks to her, keeps the conversation light and never reveals anything about the place Sabina's in. That's left to someone called Charlie, who only speaks through a radio set on the bedside table. He tells her about Townsend, the history, the work that they do, outlandish to the point where it sounds like it belongs in cheap spy novels, and Sabina wouldn't believe any of it, only -

Only Boz is by her side every day, and if Sabina looks close she can spot the signs of a life hard-lived and a soldier's gait and something in her eyes, and when Charlie speaks, Sabina watches her and sees faith, belief and truth in every inch of her expression. 

When she's healed up enough to be thinking clearly, to be back in total control of her body, Charlie makes an offer through the radio. Tells Sabina he thinks she has potential, that they're willing to take a chance on her. They'll help her through rehab, get her off drugs, train her to be the best possible version of herself that she can be. To serve the greater good, to protect people, to make the world a better place. To be an Angel. All she has to do is trust them, and let them prove worthy of it. 

She keeps her eyes fixed on Boz, who smiles back, and says yes.

Rehab sucks. Withdrawal is awful and at its worst she once almost claws her eyes out crying and brokenly begging Boz for just one more hit. Boz holds her wrists together and makes Sabina look at her, talks to her without letting up, forcing her to focus and not letting her out of her grip until they're both hoarse. She's not there all the time - she's still a Bosley and she has work to do - but whenever it's truly, truly bad, when Sabina is screaming and wishing she'd never said yes - to Charlie's offer or to that very first pill she's never clear-headed enough to be sure - Boz is there, somehow, by her side. Telling her it's going to be fine, reminding Sabina why it was worth it. Why it's going to be. 

Her twenty-first winter arrives, and she's clean. Charlie gives her the go-ahead to start on training and Boz squeezes her hand and tells her she's proud. "You're going to kill it," she grins. "I believe in you." 

"Will you help me?" Sabina asks, feeling a rush of uncertainty, the fear of stepping into something unknown. "If it gets hard?"

"Of course. You can trust me," and Sabina does, and it feels like she always will. 

After everything she goes through getting her system clean, training... well, it isn't a breeze, exactly, but she tackles it with more joy, enthusiasm and relish than she ever expected she would. She's relieved and happy when she aces her shooting and riding modules, glad that the muscle memory didn't let her down even when she was losing control of her own body. Her lungs feel clearer, and so does her mind, more than it has been for years. The horses in the Townsend stable aren't Mikkel and never will be, but Sabina leads one on a perfect jump circuit and knows, now, even with the bittersweetness on her tongue, that they don't need to be. 

She works hard, puts herself through the paces. It's almost like awakening something forgotten - having a goal, something to work for, feeling pride and accomplishment swell in her heart when her trainers grin approvingly at her or when Boz tells her she's definitely going to make full Angel status in record time. It takes time to get used to, sure, because she's never had the opportunity to feel like this, but it's... good. 

The morning before she gets her tattoo, she and Boz go out riding, a ways beyond the compound and onto rolling hills, and Boz tells Sabina she's so, so proud, gives her that blindingly beautiful smile she reserves for her happiest of moments, and Sabina grins back, and she knows she's going to be okay.

Being an Angel is the best thing in the world. She gets her own apartment set up in Paris, hops around the globe, meets lots of fellow Angels, gets a whole world's worth of different, exciting experiences. Takes down horrible people that exploit and hurt innocent civilians, keeps people safe like Charlie promised. She ends every mission tired but satisfied, never feeling like she's had to compromise her morals or her principles or human life. It's as easy as breathing. It's everything she never knew she wanted, the lonely little rich heiress on Park Avenue wondering if her cold world was all there was to it. 

Boz is her handler for about half her assignments. They work well together, the rapport already there. Boz learns to read her like a book, and Sabina learns in turn to trust the voice in her ear, no matter what it asks her to do. She throws herself out of tenth-storey windows, jumps into raging rivers, leaps into danger without a second thought as long as Boz says _go,_ and she never, ever gets let down. Sabina follows, and she thinks she would be happy to do that, all her life. Boz is heart, and sharp brilliance, and absolute, unflinching loyalty to doing the right thing, to the greater good, and Sabina looks to her, trusts her, loves her - she loves her. With every breath, with every beat of her heart, an inevitability. Boz touches her thoughtlessly, laughingly, achingly platonic, and it (almost) doesn't even hurt, because requited or not, it is what it is. A universal truth - Boz is her truth, and Sabina trusts her. 

Then Elena Houghlin drops into her world, and everything, everything, changes. 

Elena Houghlin's life intersects with hers with the aid of Ingrid and Calisto and a single email that Edgar picks up on. A year after she gets pushed off a roof by one Jane Kano in Rio after laying a much-deserved smackdown on annoying Johnny Australia, she ends up in Hamburg with Jane and Edgar and watches things play out with binoculars in hand. Elena is a low-risk, just another whistleblower slipping out information on her crooked superior, until she isn't. 

She fucks up. She doesn't say so to Jane or Elena, but she does and she knows it. She keeps up a front up until Boz gets them all into the safehouse and they're briefed for Operation Invade Brok and night settles and Elena is sleeping in one of the bedrooms and Jane in another, and Sabina joins Boz in hers and leans into her shoulder and shudders quietly against her and tries, badly, not to cry. 

"It's okay," Boz murmurs, stroking a gentle hand down her back. "We're going to figure this out. We're going to make this right."

"I killed Edgar," Sabina replies, choking on the words, feeling so, so angry, humiliated, the despair clinging and clinging, sinking her stomach. "It was me, it was my fault, and I let the assassin get away - " 

Boz lets her cry properly into her shirt. Doesn't say anything, just holds her and taps Morse over and over against her wrist, so the brush of her fingertips remains, an apparition, even hours later when Sabina's curled back up in her own bed trying to go to sleep. Reassurance, a promise, that it's going to be all right. 

It's a promise, and Boz keeps promises, Sabina knows that, she knows it, _you can trust me,_ and she always has, she always will, always - 

There's a voice in her ear, and she trusts it with her life, with her heart, with everything she has, will throw herself out of windows for it, jump into rivers for it, kill for it, die for it, _die for it_ \- 

And in the middle of a quarry, with rocks grinding around her, swallowed up, pulverised, a thug trying to get her to meet a grisly end, it goes silent, and she almost does - 

"Elena! _Help me!"_ She screams, desperation cracking in her voice, scrabbling to get out of this death trap, her mind whirling, and visions of a dark alley flash across her eyes - blood on her shirt, her mind foggy, an angel in front of her, so beautiful, a dying dream, one last hallucination before it all shuts down - 

_"Sabina! Reach up!"_

And she's learned to trust a voice in her ear, and this isn't the same one, but she reaches up anyway, and just like that, swept from the jaws of death, she's okay.

But she's not, none of it is okay, _none of it -_ they get back to an eerily empty hotel, their voices echoing off the walls, and Jane is still talking about them getting made, about Boz doing a sweep, but something is sinking in Sabina's chest. Something is gripping tight, constricting her breath, the tears beginning to brim, and she's thinking, she can't stop thinking - about cinnamon walnut cookies, about having someone taken from her, about absent parents and exhausted tutors and uncaring teachers, about a cold, cold home, about running on the streets, slipping deft fingers into people's pockets, about countless promises broken and false ones made, before an altar, through a radio, about trust given and trust betrayed - 

_It's okay, we're going to make this right._

Jane says things Sabina knows to be true - Boz being the first Angel to be promoted to Bosley, her being one of them - or are they? Are they true? She's learned the history too, knows it as well as Jane does, has memories of Boz quizzing her before tests in the comfort of HQ. 

"She would not be the first Angel to turn," she says, the words dropping like stones from her mouth. Sees Jane's expression waver, sees Elena's confusion, fear, pointing out Boz's idea to steal Calisto from the lab. Her voice breaks on it, and it hurts, hurts more than it did when she was going through withdrawal. "It's her. Fleming's dead, Calisto's gone, and so is she." 

She's gone. 

And with it, everything - Sabina's belief, her faith, that inevitability, the three words at the back of her throat, her mind, every time they're together - 

A phone rings. Elena begins to speak, Sabina sees her, watches her, 

and then a moment, 

and her world explodes - 

She'd call it deja vu, to wake up in a strange place, badly wounded, with someone by her side, only it's definitely not the antiseptic-clean sharpness of Townsend and Jane is crying her eyes out while holding her hand tight, so - but close enough. It's nice, to see Jane smiling tremulously, to know that Jane learned to trust in more than just herself, though that's precisely what got them here, wasn't it, Sabina thinks, bitter, heart aching, and that's when Saint appears in the door and with him - Boz. 

Jane is on her feet before Sabina can even blink, this close to putting a fist in Boz's face. Saint stops her and Boz reels back a little, and Sabina has known her nine years now, sees the anguish so clear on her face, so genuine. "I'm not the mole," she says, in this tone that calls back another four words Sabina's always remembered - _you can trust me_ \- and her breath seems to stop in her chest, when it all comes out. 

"You had no trouble believing it was me," she says, after. It's measured, careful, neutral, for Saint and Jane and Fatima's benefit, but Sabina hears much, much more than that. 

_I'm sorry,_ she wants to say, doesn't know how to begin, but then they're already preparing on how to get to Chamonix, get their girl, and everything else has to come later.

Later, thankfully, arrives, in the form of Elena rescued in Brok's mansion, Hodak dead as a doornail, and John well and truly outmatched. The rage Sabina feels when she sees his stunned face, listening to Boz speak - she doesn't even pause to think before she punches him out. It's not just the betrayal, the fury of it, but also the guilt roiling in her stomach. She believed him over Boz - Boz, who saved her life, who's always been there for her, the only one who's never lied to her, and she doesn't think she can ever forgive herself for it. 

She sleeps alone, that night, in another Townsend safehouse before they get flown back to California. Boz sits quietly, apart from them, on the plane, and Sabina starts out of her seat four times before she finally gathers the courage to go over and sit down beside her, spine straight, looking ahead, jaw clenched. Boz looks over at her. "Hey."

"I'm sorry," she says in a rush, before she can lose her nerve. "I didn't think - I should have trusted you. I always have, you've never let me down, I, I just, Boz. I'm so sorry." 

Boz looks at her, so soft, so vulnerable in a way Sabina thinks she's never seen her. "I get why, Sabina," she replies quietly. "It's just..." She pauses, takes a deep breath. It shudders a little and makes Sabina want to cry. "Look, I need to know, okay, right here, right now, I need - do you trust me? Really trust me? Because I thought - I thought you did, Sabina, of all people, after everything we've been through, I - we're friends, right? We're - friends?"

And that tiny voice in her head, the one from back when that told her to stop letting the drugs control her life, to stop fucking up and hurting herself - it comes back with a vengeance. Tells her, against all her good sense, her rationality, to say one thing, before she can stop herself. "Just friends?"

It hangs in the air, a pin drop before an explosion. Sabina feels like everything slows down, and Boz's face changes, first to confusion, then surprise, then - with that beautiful smile, the one that seems, now, to be Sabina's, hers alone - she laughs, so bright, like sunlight. "Oh, so that's how it is?"

"That's how it's been for a damn long time - mmf," she splutters a little, cut off by Boz leaning in, two fingers under her chin and tipping it up so their mouths meet in a soft sweet kiss, the best kiss she's ever had in her life. Sabina tightens her grip around Boz's arm and deepens it, feeling something settle, like the last puzzle piece just right, inside of her. Boz pulls back and cups her cheek, looks at her with those eyes, looks at her like she wants to believe. "Do you trust me, Sabina?"

"Yes," Sabina says - a truth, a promise - and Boz smiles, and that's real too, and leans back in for another kiss, and Sabina meets her halfway, and her world is cinnamon walnut, a clear mind, wind through her hair and leather reins in her hands and the world hers for the taking, and Sabina Wilson is (endlessly, boundlessly) flying. 

**Author's Note:**

> me: hey hey, imagine if in the future, sabina gets shot in the line of duty and boz is holding her in her arms as she dies and sabina raggedly whispers _that day, when you found me in that alley... when you saved my life... you were my angel. and now i get to be yours_  
>  astrid: FUCK you wtf ace what the FUCK


End file.
